Atari: The Golden Years -- A History, 1978-1981

Another
game of note from 1979 was Superman,
the first home video game ever licensed from movie franchise. Ray Kassar moved
quickly get a VCS programmer to help create a game based on the movie that was
released in late 1978. Warren Robinett had been developing a game based on the
mainframe text game Adventure since
the middle of 1978.

"I
was finishing my first video game on the Atari 2600 console. I got a chance, at
a Stanford research lab, to play the original text adventure game, which was
called Adventure. (Thank you, Don Woods and Willie Crowther.) I decided that this idea -- a
journey through a network of rooms, with objects you could move from place to
place, and obstacles and monsters to get past -- could work as a video game."
lxx

- Warren Robinett

However,
instead of an generic adventure game, Atari's new brass asked Robinett to
re-write it as a tie-in for Superman: The Movie (released in Dec. 1978).

"Atari's parent company owned
the first Superman movie
which was about to come out [and decided] that I was to change Adventure into Superman so as to ride
on the wave of hype. Every time this came up I said I would do it if I had to,
but I didn't want to. After a few weeks, my co-worker John Dunn volunteered to
take my code and do the Superman
game, leaving me free to do the Adventure game." lxxi

- Warren Robinett

Robinett helped Dunn get started by loaning him the kernel code
from his Adventure to use as the basis for the game. Dunn, as an
artist at heart, pushed to use 4K of ROM (almost unheard of at the time) to
make detailed graphics for the game. lxxii

Even so, the game was a sort of "forced
march" that the VCS team had not experienced prior. Instead of being
allowed to create their own games in six months, marketing was now dictating
which games would be made, and which ones would be released. For Dunn, the process
of making the game killed his enthusiasm for Atari.

"Before Warner acquired Atari
from Nolan Bushnell, the VCS programmers had the freedom to design their own
games from concept to finish. It was an intense, joyfully creative period that
did not survive the takeover." lxxiii

- John Dunn

Superman was released in mid-1979, beating Adventure, which was released for
Christmas that year. However, no matter which one was released first, Adventure became a huge hit. Sales may have been piqued by the inclusion of the very first known "Easter egg" in a
video game.

Since Atari was not keen to credit any development staff for their
games, Warren Robinett inserted his name into the game and created an elaborate
method to access it -- including a nearly invisible dot and a secret room.

"Each 2600 game was designed entirely by one
person. But on the package it said basically 'Adventure, by Atari.' And we were only getting salaries, no cut of the huge
profits. It was a signature, like at the bottom of a painting. But to make it
happen, I had to hide my signature in the code, in a really obscure place, and
not tell anybody" lxxiv

-
Warren Robinett

Soon after
the release of Adventure, Warren
Robinett left Atari, and soon after that, Atari management found out about the
Easter egg.

"My model in
creating the secret room was the secret messages hidden in Beatle records ('I
buried Paul') in the late Sixties, where you had to play the record backwards
to hear the message... Atari manufactured several hundred thousand Adventure
cartridges, sent them to stores all over the world, and sure enough, some kids
here and there did discover the secret room. lxxv

- Warren Robinett

At first
they wanted it removed, but soon realized that the "hidden secrets"
could sell more games. Adventure
ultimately sold more than 1,000,000 copies. lxxvi

"Finding that dot and then the secret
room was one my first memories of playing video games. I read about the Easter
Egg in Atari Age magazine, and worked for hours and hours to finally get the
process to work. Seeing that secret room
for the first time was like magic."

-
Anonymous Atari Fan

Even though
Atari eventually embraced the idea of the Easter egg, management still did not
understand the reason why it was actually placed in the game. The programming
team was disgruntled and something had to be done about it.

"We all were very unhappy with
the changes Warner was making. We felt (correctly, I think) they did not
understand that game programmers were creative types, not engineering types,
and needed to be treated accordingly." lxxvii

- John Dunn

The most
visible manifestation of this programmer unrest came in the form of "The Fantastic
Four", a group of the four of the most tenured and best VCS programmers:
David Crane, Bob Whitehead, Larry Kaplan, and Alan Miller. The four were seen
as the most senior and most knowledgeable programmers on the VCS staff.

There was good reason
why the four had received that nickname. Their combined effort had been
responsible for the majority of Atari VCS cartridge sales by 1979.

"At that time, David, Bob, Larry, and I accounted for about two-thirds of
Atari cart sales." lxxviii

- Alan Miller

Most of
these programmers had been borrowed for half of 1978, and into 1979, to write
the operating system for the Atari 8-bit computer line. However, as the most
senior members of the VCS team, they felt the need to speak up for the rest of
the programmers. The morale of the VCS staff was running low in mid-1979.

Pay
was low, especially compared to other jobs in Silicon Valley. In addition, the game designers and
programmers wanted some credit and some kind of share in the profits of the
games they produced. Bushnell had treated the programmers like rock stars, and
had provided and environment that let them flourish.

"As time went on it soon became
clear that there were rock stars, there were people of extraordinary talent
that deserved to make a whole bunch of money." lxxix

- Nolan Bushnell

The new
Atari management did not value them quite as much. The "Fantastic Four"
put their concerns and needs into written format and submitted them to Ray
Kassar. Their requests were not outlandish, and were based on the record
industry, a business Warner Communications was well-versed in.

"I researched the compensation
aspects of the recording industry and the book industry, drafted a contract
that would allow me to be credited for my work and receive a very modest royalty,
and presented it to Atari management. After a while, I told my three closest
associates at Atari -- David Crane, Bob Whitehead, and Larry Kaplan -- what I
was doing. They joined me in those discussions. We developed a
growing impression that Atari was going to agree to some plan along the lines we
proposed." lxxx

- Alan Miller

However, Kassar's
response was less than what they were hoping for.

"They wrote a letter to Ray
Kassar saying 'give us a share, give us a fair share'... they wanted a cut a
royalty program or something. Ray wrote back this letter that basically
dismissed them entirely, including one phrase that specifically said 'you're
nothing but a bunch of towel designers, you're a dime a dozen.'" lxxxi

- Rob Zdybel

One by one,
the group of four left Atari to set out on their own path... only to join
together soon after.

"I told the truth too often and left
in August of 1979." lxxxii

- Larry Kaplan

This did
not stir anyone in marketing, because they did not really understand much about
the engineering group or what it took to make a VCS game. They truly thought
the engineers were a dime-a-dozen. However, according to Bushnell, "Their
value to the company was such that you could easily see they would have value
to another company." lxxxiii

The four
had a plan. They decided to raise investment capital to start their own
company. On October 1, 1979, David Crane, Alan Miller, Larry
Kaplan, and Bob Whitehead joined with Jim Levy, and formed Activision. Their
plan was to create games for the Atari VCS as a direct competitor to Atari. It
was a bold move that changed the landscape of the home video game business
forever.